Allen slammed open the door to the hotel room and looked around the common room. He had gotten a few looks on his way, bringing the little girl in with him. She still had blood smeared at the edges of her face and other bits and bobs in her hair, but that kind of thing was sort of normal, just not on kids… typically.

She was also not-so-subtly crying.

The looks were probably more to do with how Allen had been practically dragging her. It was certainly suspicious behavior. She was fourteen though, so Allen could feasibly pass as her older brother given how young he looked. A set of semi-formal clothes probably helped Allen avoid any confrontation, which was just as well because neither of them had time to waste. The thorn had to be removed from the girl as fast as possible.

“Meredith!” Allen yelled into the room. He leaned to the side, trying to get a better look around the room. It was late, but Camila was still awake with a bottle of wine, lounging on one of the sofas near the ornate window on the opposing wall. Allen eyed her like an accessory to the room. “Where’s Meredith?” he asked.

Camila grunted and returned a careless smirk. “Who’s that again?”

Allen hissed through his teeth. “The healer; dresses like a nun, but like, from the conjuring as opposed to a church.”

“Oh her,” Camila started. She shifted her hips on the sofa and swished her wine around. Allen watched her head lull back as she seemed to think deeply for a moment. She was, of course, just drunk. Naked too. Well, practically. By Unnamed World’s standards, she was dressed in a way only meant for her husband to ever see, but by Allen’s Earthly standards, she was just wearing pajama shorts and a crop top. Then she hiccupped, spilling a little wine on the sofa as her eyes flicked over to the girl standing beside Allen. “Who’s she? Isn’t she a little too young for you?”

Allen scoffed and shouted into the hotel room. “Meredith! Are you here?”

Nobody replied.

“I mean, I won’t judge,” Camila continued, eyes twinkling. “Sometimes I, like, think it might be fun to go after some teenager boy or whatever. I mean like, this body is nineteen, like… hol up, does that make me a cougar? Wouldn’t it—”

“NO! It would make you a child predator you fucking dumbass bitch!” Allen suddenly snapped. He massaged his temples and beathed in. It was just… a really time sensitive thing. The last thing any of them needed was more high leveled perps on their asses. “Just tell me were Meredith is.”

Camila snorted and took a huge sip of her wine. “I don’t fuckin know, she left with that other lady and that sexy elf. Now get off my dick about it.”

“Godsdamned useless,” Allen muttered.

He pulled the girl towards the room he, Jack, and Shoam were using. Allen knocked three times, and the lack of an echo told him the privacy wards had already been set up. He glanced down at the girl and was immediately surprised to see her smiling thinly through her reddened eyes.

“What’s so funny?” Allen asked, waiting for the door to open. Jack was probably just taking a nap if nobody else was around, even though he absolutely didn’t need one.

The girl returned Allen’s look of momentary confusion, then she quickly averted her eyes. “N-nothing… That lady just reminded me of um, my older sister… but uh, a lot worse.”

Allen chuckled and shook his head as Jack pulled the door open. The Ranger’s gaze settled to the girl almost immediately, before returning to Allen. The girl shrunk back as most people did around high leveled strangers.

“She’s from the missing group that was abducted from Silt Valley,” Allen began with no preamble. “She told me a bit about how she escaped, but she needs her thorn removed.”

Jack took a moment to put the pieces together before running his hands through his disheveled bed hair. “Oh,” he said and looked around the empty room behind him. “Well, Meredith and the others are tracking the Lanthinus company’s previous trade deals. We’ve found a few suspicious items in their records, but nothing for sure. Can um… Can your healer remove thorns? It’s just a normal red one right?”

Allen nodded. “It is, but I don’t know if Amelia can remove it.” He scratched his head, aware of the girl anxiously looking between the two of them. “She might be able to remove it; the main problem is how much pain it causes, or maybe Christopher has something up his sleeve.”

“Hmm, I’ll call Meredith back then, go get your companions,” Jack said, summoning a communication totem from his inventory.

The three of them made their way across the hotel room, ignoring Camila lounging on the sofa. Jack did sneak a few peeks though. She was admittedly quite attractive, but only to the eyes. It was Allen who knocked on the door to the second bedroom. Once again, he didn’t bother speaking at the door since the privacy wards would block everything out from both ways.

“We need to remove a thorn, quickly,” Allen said as soon as the door opened. It was Amelia, surprisingly. Christopher was sitting at the desk at the back with an empty chair beside him while Ty was sleeping on one of the two beds. There was an unfamiliar hex drawn on parchment and laid out on the desk, but that was where Allen’s curiosity ended. “Can you remove thorns? Meredith isn’t here,” he continued, motioning at the girl.

Amelia seemed to eye Allen with uncertainly for a moment, maybe even suspicion, but she swiftly let that go and focused on the girl. “Um, I can cut it out, but it will be painful,” she began, wincing at the girl’s horrified look. “I also can’t do anything about it’s counter effects. At her level, I might not be fast enough to get it out before it seriously hurts her… So um, it’s probably not a good idea.”

The girl didn’t seem to be very happy to hear that.

There was a beat of silence before Christopher spoke up form the back. “The ward on this room would probably prevent the tracking, then Amelia can remove it with Dissection. Would that work?”

Allen hummed. “I have no idea, but probably not. These thorns are designed to be as hard as possible to get out, even the cheap ones.”

“I upgraded Numbing, but it still doesn’t cancel pain entirely,” Amelia added.

The girl shuffled uncomfortably. The conversation wasn’t particularly reassuring to Allen either. He himself had experienced removing thorns. The red ones could be torn out of anybody above level fifty with only a lot of pain, then it would be over after some healing. The blue ones would shock the wearer if they disobeyed orders or tried pulling hard enough on it. If a blue thorn was somehow damaged it would instantly implode the wearer’s skull, easily killing anybody below level two-hundred. That would usually cause a slave to respawn in their master’s dungeon or something; wherever their respawn point had been forcibly set.

Blue thorns weren’t even the most potent, not even close. White thorns could turn a level one-thousand Mage into little more than a puppet. Fortunately, dragon cores were much more difficult to get than blood stones or etherium crystals.

“Meredith is coming back, she’ll be here any minute,” Jack said, putting his communication totem away. “Close the door, I don’t want anybody tracking us here if they haven’t already.”

The group pushed themselves into the room. Christopher grunted as he pushed himself up and approached the girl. She turned away but only on instinct; the professor wasn’t very intimidating.

“Ward is up,” Jack spoke after closing the door. The room became noticeably quieter as he said so.

Christopher pulled the girl’s shawl back to get a look at the back of her neck. Then he glanced around the room like there was a bug flying around or something. “Okay, it seems to be isolating the tracking enchantment,” he said. “All mana waves I can see coming off of it aren’t making it out of the room.”

“I need to get myself a Mana Sight skill,” Allen thought. He saw Jack glancing around too, but he just wrinkled his nose in confusion. “Is he even using generic mana sight? Because I’m pretty sure Jack has that skill.”

Amelia poked around at the thorn in the girl’s neck too. She clicked her tongue. “I really shouldn’t. It’ll hurt a lot. If she were above level twenty I might try it with a healing potion, but it’s not worth it.” She got grunts of assent from around the room, not including Ty’s light snoring. It seemed everyone was content to wait for Meredith; she could remove a red thorn in her sleep. Amelia flicked a piece of brain out of the girl’s hair and gave Allen another look. “Where did you find her?”

“She’s not being accusatory, she’s just being Amelia,” Allen told himself, taking a deep breath. “In the slums. Killed a creepster for my achievement and found her. She’s one of the Silt Valley girls we’re looking for.”

That opened her eyes. Amelia bit her lip and turned her attention back to the girl. Allen figured he figured there wouldn’t be much for him to do, and he had skills to go through. With a tired sigh, he rolled his shoulders and reached for the door. It opened for him instead and Meredith walked in.

The girl spun around in a fright, letting out a short “eep!”

Meredith was even less intimidating than Christopher though; she felt like a nice old grandma who always brought cookies and pie, despite the fact that she looked no older than thirty. She just had that feeling, it was inexplicable. Of course, the name of the Seamstress was still feared worldwide, but most people don’t know a serial murderer when they see one.

“Ah, there you are sweetheart,” Meredith began, a huge smile on her face. The tension in the girl’s shoulders melted away, but she still hadn’t found the courage to say anything. “Come here, let me get that awful thing out of you.”

Meredith raised her hand before the last word even left her lips. The girl didn’t even have the chance to react before her neck was turned into threads of golden miasma and her head was lifted off her shoulders. A single thread snatched the thorn out from between the girl’s unraveled shoulders before everything knit itself back together in one fluid motion. Meredith rested one hand on the girl’s head as the thorn dropped into her other. “There we go, much better,” she said, still smiling.

The girl stood motionless, her eyes wide enough that they might fall out. She was the only one who seemed even a little bit concerned, for better or for worse.

“Alright well, glad that’s done with,” Jack said, already turning to leave.

“Yeah, can you take care of her, Amelia?” Allen asked, following Jack and Meredith out the door as well. He got a curt nod from the Healer before she tried to unfreeze the girl.

Allen yawned as he closed the bedroom door, feeling the ward slide into place with his enhanced senses. “Why do you still have that?” he asked Meredith. She still had the thorn in her hand.

The woman side eyed him as her skin started to turn preternaturally pale, almost see-through. “Well dear, there are some people who need to be scolded.” As the words teasingly left her lips, threads of light wrapped themselves all over her body, beneath her robes. The skin on her face seemed to turn into a wispy white substance as the sclera of her eyes turned black. She stared to shrink while her threads wove into her own body.

The process was finished in a few seconds, after which she stood almost two heads shorter than before. Her hair was light brown where it poked out from under her veil, and her robe was bunched up on the floor. She quickly switched it out for a simple white gown with a scarf around her shoulders. Her new face looked identical to the girl’s, down to every freckle on her face.

“Okay, well have fun then,” Allen said, sharing a smile with the Healer as her eyes regained their whiteness.

“Just don’t make more work for me,” Jack added.

“Oh, I wouldn’t do such a thing,” Meredith replied, pushing the thorn into her own neck with a bit of threadwork. “Bye now,” she added with another smile, and vanished in a flash of light.

Allen and Jack looked between each other for a moment. Allen coughed. “Alright, I’m going to bed,” he said.